BalletX finished up their 2023-24 regular season with a wide-ranging program of three premiere ballets the showcased the company’s artistic daring and more than a little joy in presenting new ballets. It is a heady time for the company as beneficiaries of a $7.4 legacy gift from the late writer and arts philanthropist Joan DeJean, who has championed the company for many years.
The money will fuel the company’s many initiatives that Co-founding Artistic Director Christine Cox already has in place, such as the choreographic residency programs and commission new ballets every season and expanding their roster of dancers The company has been increasing their tour schedule and community outreach in schools and performing free public performances around the city. The Wilma Theater has been the company’s home stage, but next season they will be moving to the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, a larger venue on Philly’s Broad Street Avenue of the Arts corridor.
But on this night for their season closer at the Wilma, it was all about the three premieres by choreographers Amy Hall Garner, Loughlan Prior and Stina Quagebeur.
The program opened with Garner’s ‘Suite No. 46, Op. 1’ a mix of music by Antonio Vivaldi and J.S.Bach performed by a chamber string quart and keyboardist. The baroque music fueling Garner’s pure movement ballet featuring sterling technical artistry liberated from cold classicism. String quartet musicians were Maria Im, Samantha Crawford, Kathryn Dark, Branson Yeast, & Moriah Trenk.
The Suite opens with five men- Eli Alford, Mathis Joubert, Jared Kelly, Jonathan Montepara, and Ben Swartz dancing in adagio phrases in silence, but when Itzkan Barbosa flies over the stage the musicians launch into a Vivaldi Violin Concerto as the other ballerinas – Francesca Forcella, Savannah Green, Skyler Lubin, Ashley Simpson- join in and the ensemble takes off. There is palpable energy between the dancers and live musicians onstage. Susan Roemer’s costume design body hugging but flowing dancewear making every movement pop. Garner is a violinist herself and brings a unique edge to classical ballet and contemporary variations. This piece already has the polish and drive of a BalletX signature work. Garner is BalletX’s current choreographer in residence.
All of the pointe work is executed with precision, sharp duets, and supple ensemble esprit de corps. Garner is inside the rhythmic drive of Vivaldi and the choreographic alchemy this music inspires. This has the immediate look of a signature work for this company
Belgium choreographer Stina Quagebeur’s ‘Everything InBetween’ is a dance drama about a couple trying to work out their differences and face hard truths. They are first seated on a couch that suggest they are in therapy revisiting episodes in their stormy relationship. Meanwhile, behind them are other dancers, specters of the couples’ former selves acting out scenes they are reliving from their relationship. Francesa Forcella and Jarard Palazo are moving and edgy as the troubled couple. fully invested in both the choreography and the acting it requires.
Quagebeur’s choreography expressing their inner turmoil. It is an ambitious piece a specificity to the physicality requiring expressing conflicting emotions from rage to tenderness through the choreograph passages strike as bravely intimate as well as a bit static in movement vocabulary. Composer Jeremy Birchall original orchestral score is shadowy and introspective.
Choreographically this ballet has the look of a middle draft. Late in the ballet Quagebeur inserts a party scene that recalls one of their major fights, but it seems misplaced (it may have been more effective earlier in the ballet). But I may be in the minority because this audience embraced this work with extended applause.
The program closer was a fabulously queer affair called ‘Macaroni’ by New Zealand choreographer Loughlin Prior, scored to variations on a themes baked into the Americana tune ‘Yankie Doodle’ about those effeminate dandies, aka Macaroni, a period slur akin to any number of epithets against gay people. Prior though embraces their bravery and fabulousness. In a runaway showcase with Francesca Forcella., Laney Jackson, Mathis Joubert. Joe Barrett, Jared Kelly., Skyler Lupin, Jonathan Montepara, Ashley Simpson, Peter Weil. All genderfluid in costume designer Emma Kingsbury’s diva couture tailcoats, glo-unitards, court wiglets and warrior feathers.
Composer Claire Cowan’s time-travels with variants on ‘Yankie Doodle’ including a funk rap and runway rant. The dancer time-out for a fouffy badminton match, a hilarious pantomime tea party, and a wild nature tableaux about the mating rituals of flamingos where the females choose their males and mate for life. Eli Alford and Ben Swartz dance a quiet central duet after they find each other when they are not chosen by a female to mate. Prior’s ballet is warm, witty and glittering dance diva mayhem from the house of legendary queer camp.
